As oil prices plummeted to their lowest level in three years, Alberta Energy Minister Frank Oberle said Tuesday he doesn’t expect major provincial budget cuts this year or a sharp slowdown in the energy sector. West Texas Intermediate crude slid two per cent to $77.19 US a barrel — the lowest closing price since October 2011 — on Tuesday, a day after energy heavyweight Saudi Arabia cut the price of oil sold into the United States.

CALGARY — In a sign that oil and gas exploration remains strong despite lower prices, Calgary-based Trinidad Drilling Ltd. announced Thursday it will build five new high-tech rigs for the U.S. market. The new equipment, estimated to cost $130 million with half spent this year and half in 2015, is backed by long-term take-or-pay contracts, the company said.

We’re sorry, Canada. For many years, you’ve been a valuable friend, ally, trading partner and good neighbour to us here in the United States. But on Sept. 19, 2008, six years ago yesterday, one of your companies, TransCanada, filed a permit application with our government to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which will bring some of your oil to the United States.

There’s a reason we refer to professors and scholars as academics — it’s because while they might be book smart or be in possession of great intellect, they are often far removed from the workings of the real world.

Enthusiasm shines through professional reserve when Trent Yanko explains the subterranean rocket science he uses to reopen the Turner Valley black gold reservoir. Deep and horizontal barely begin to describe his designer wells. To visualize the underground trails blazed by modern drilling, first look at that office supply store, says the engineer, pointing down from his president’s suite at Legacy Oil and Gas Inc. Then imagine a sculpture in steel pipe that starts at the store’s parking lot and soars over seven blocks of downtown Calgary to his 44th-floor picture window.

While Neil Young spoke to a Calgary news conference at the Jack Singer Concert Hall prior to his Sunday night show, five rock star-style motorhomes were left running outside, spewing fumes into the Calgary air, even though they were mostly unoccupied. Inside the concert hall, the 68-year-old rock ‘n’ roll legend was talking about the “elephant in the room,” which he later explained was man-made global warming. The only elephant I could see was his enormous carbon footprint and his even bigger hypocrisy between his walk and his talk.

TORONTO - Infectious disease watchers were worried in the late summer of 2013. The largest annual mass gathering in the world, the Hajj, was approaching. Meanwhile, infections with the new MERS coronavirus were mounting weekly in Saudi Arabia, where more than two million of the Muslim faithful would soon gather.

Archbishop Justin Welby’s choice of the word “martyrs” to describe the 85 Pakistani Christians killed when their church in Peshawar was targeted by suicide bombers has raised eyebrows. It is the sort of language avoided nowadays in the secular, sceptical West, with its taken-for-granted religious freedoms, in case it makes people feel uncomfortable.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Barack Obama acknowledged deep divisions at home and abroad on Friday over his call for military action in Syria — and conceded the possibility he’ll fail to sway the American public. He refused to say whether he would act without passage of congressional authorization for a strike in response to chemical weapons use.

CALGARY — After chopping millions from its capital budget last year in the face of slowing North American exploration activity, Canada’s largest drilling contractor is building rigs again. Precision Drilling Corp. of Calgary announced Thursday it will increase its 2013 capital budget by $121 million to $654 million to add five new-build Super Series rigs to previous plans to build just one.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have invited outside experts to help it deal with a large outbreak of the new coronavirus in the eastern Saudi city of al Hofuf, and a Canadian infectious diseases specialist is among them.

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